Parent Involvement? Helpful or Hindering? (1-29-09)

This morning was one of those mornings that throws you off. It wasn't that I got up on the wrong side of the bed, or that I wasn't prepared to teach. I was running a bit late, but even that wasn't much to overcome. What really knocked me off course was the parent/student meeting that started my day.

Parent involvement in their students' school lives is crucial. There is no question that having an engaged family can most certainly benefit both the individual student and the school community. This positive side of the parent coin is one that I wish was the only side. Unfortunately, there is a negative side to this coin, no matter how infrequently it shows.

The parent this morning was such a negative and intimidating presence in the room that you had to question whether involving her at all was a wise decision. As the student sat with tears running down his face and the parent continued to unleash her intensely negative and degrading rhetoric I found myself feeling more and more uncomfortable. Trying to gain some semblance of productivity, the teachers and I continued to go back to the positives we've been seeing as well as interventions that we believe could be used to support this student in improving. No matter what we said it all went back to the same thing.

The parent didn't say it and it wasn't written anywhere, but all I kept hearing was "you suck...what's wrong with you?" Was it really such a shock to see that this student was floundering at school and has been for years? This is a kid who hasn't "legitimately" passed a class since elementary school and has more disciplinary referrals then there are members of the Senate.

After having a few hours to reflect on the experience and others that I've had in the past of similar caliber I derived a few notions. Here they are in no particular order.

1.) How could this parent not be angry?
- Whether she did it to herself, meaning that the parenting techniques used during the student's childhood led to his current state, or this is just how things turned out after a valiant effort as a mother, it's almost impossible not to see where the anger comes from. If I had a financially inadequate and personally unsatisfying job, lived in a run down house and had one child who was completely failing in his academic endeavors for a series of years I too would be pissed. To stay optimistic and provide constant positive support to that student and to the school would become a nearly impossible task. I don't believe this gives a parent the right to degrade their child in front of their teachers, but it does allow me to empathize with her position.

2.) Parental involvement can be a hindrance to our work
- Parents have a right to know about their child's progress at school and to be involved in their child's life. However, once we engage with certain parents and discover that their presence can at times be more harmful then helpful we must take such knowledge into consideration in future attempts to support that student. So many of our students have heard "negative talk" for so long that simply piling more of it on at the high school level won't do anything to turn things around. The famous study titled "The Early Catastrophe: The 30 Million Word Gap by Age 3" makes a clear note of the differences experienced between children of professional families and those growing up in poverty. According to their study, children being raised by professional families hear an average of 166,000 encouragements compared to 26,000 discouragements over the course of a year. Inversely, children from welfare families will hear an average of 26,000 encouragements versus 57,000 discouragements over that same year. I believe our students have heard enough of the negative. It's time to focus on the positive.

3.) Some of our biggest problems don't have clear solutions
This is obvious, but at the same time needs to be addressed. The student we were dealing with this morning has serious learning deficits in addition to chronic behavior problems and a lack of motivation. Combined, he becomes one of our greatest difficulties when it comes to ensuring that he receives an education that will allow him to thrive in both school and life. Finding solutions to making sure he learns what he needs to be successful from both the academic and character side of the education spectrum is a daunting if not impossible task. However, it is the task that we've chosen to take on and the task in which we must succeed.

This morning was a tough morning. The kind that makes you step back for a second and realize the realities of where you're working and who you're working with. It's scary to think that millions of parents like the one I encountered this morning are raising millions of children across this country. Regardless, it is our job to move past mornings like the one I had and put all of our energy into educating our students. This morning wasn't a new experience for me, but it really does get me each time it happens. Part of you wants to give the student a big hug and another part wants to ream into the parent. When you let your emotions subside you realize that all you can do is work your ass of to make sure you save that student. The parent may be too far gone...the child can be saved.

Math teacher...who said anything about math?

Progressive vs. Traditional – Who’s right, who’s wrong (12-17-08)

There I was, sitting in the kitchen at an antique wooden table staring at a giant page of numbers. Rows and columns filled with digits jumped off the paper, screaming at me where only an hour ago my mother’s turkey loaf had done the same. The multiplication table was my nemesis (no different then the turkey loaf). I don’t remember what grade I was in or who my teacher was, but the sound of my father’s voice reaming into me about how important it was to master this matrix of data from one through twelve still resonates in my head. As the family embarked into the living room to watch one of the classic Star Wars films on the latest and greatest technology, laser discs, I was stuck at that antique wooden table, staring at numbers and for the one and only time in my life, wishing it was the turkey loaf instead.

School didn’t have to make sure I mastered my multiplication fluency, my family did. In fact, there are a lot of things school didn’t have to do for me.

Here are just a few examples

• How to act around professionals: My father always had business colleagues over at the house.
• How to advocate and negotiate: I learned this through compromising with my mom from an early age.
• How to speak using professional language: It’s all I heard from birth through adulthood.
• How to persevere in difficult situations: That’s all I saw. No one around me ever folded growing up. There was no task that couldn’t be accomplished. From starting companies to getting patents approved…anything and everything was possible.

Now let’s go back to that pesky multiplication table. My personal experience strikes at the heart of the national debate between progressive and traditional math instruction. The reality is that not all students from the multitude of backgrounds that we teach need the same thing. In fact, providing them with the same instruction is a complete disservice. To argue for Saxon math (the most traditional drill and kill curriculum I’ve ever seen) or Interactive Mathematics Program (IMP – the most inquiry, discovery based curriculum available) is a ludicrous notion if the students that the curriculum is going to serve aren’t taken into consideration.

The bottom line…I don’t think it mattered what curriculum my math teachers used during my middle and high school years. Regardless, I was going to have my math fluency down…not much of a choice when your father is an engineer. However, when I consider the students that I’m teaching, impoverished minority adolescents entering 9^th grade with only 8 % demonstrating grade level proficiency, it’s clear that my fate as a numerically literate individual is not the same for the clients I serve unless our school does what my family and my school were able to do for me.

It’s no secret that every “beat the odds” school I’ve visited across Colorado and the country uses direct instruction as their primary means of delivering information. Their thinking…we have way too much to cover because we’re already two to three years behind. There is no choice but for the teacher to own the content and for the students to sponge it up. As a result, you don’t see collaborative groups working through open ended projects at their own pace. You don’t see spiraling curriculums in place where the teacher moves on even though the majority of the class hasn’t shown mastery because they know that the topic will come back sometime before the end of the year or maybe next year. In fact, what you see is the opposite. A consistent push for mastery of specific learning outcomes that are the foundation of mathematics understanding.

Coming out of college all I could think about was getting students to see relevance in their mathematics and engaging them in exciting, dynamic learning experiences. I wanted them to discover the big ideas of mathematics with my facilitation, but I didn’t want to force or rush it. I taught with little to no urgency. In contrast, the schools that are preparing our most under serviced youth in this nation, poor, minority students, for college and beyond teach as though every minute was a last breath in an effort to resuscitate a drowning victim. These schools recognize the Lisa Delpit perspective that so cautions us of worrying so much about engaging and encouraging our “behind grade level” students that we fail to teach them the rules of the game.

Her argument is framed around writing and literacy, but its message resonates in the world of math education just the same. If all we worry about is engaging our students in mathematics thinking and we fail to teach them function-notation or the various ways to write a ratio then we are not preparing them for life. There is a way the game of life is played and grammar, punctuation and sentence structure all play a role. Just because a student is able to organize some creative thoughts on a piece of paper doesn’t mean we’ve gotten them ready to compete. Those thoughts need to be presented with a commanding understanding of formal English language if we want them to be taken seriously and accepted when they enter the global economic workplace. Math is no different.

We can’t simply pat our students on the back for finding a pattern in a sequence of numbers. They need to be able to use the professional terms associated with such mathematics. I found the “recursive routine” and the “starting value” is ________ and the “rule’ that gets you to the next “term” is ___________. Students need to engage in the fundamentals and formalize their understanding using the same mathematics language that will be presented to them when they enter college. If we want them to become successful college students then we have to treat them as such from early on. This includes not only our interactions with them, but the way in which we deliver content and what we deem as acceptable mastery before moving on to the next piece of content.

In the end, the debate between progressive and traditional math instruction is one that we all know the answer to, we’re just not talking about it. Picture it as a possible 100 % combination. Meaning, in a perfectly balanced classroom we would see 50 % of one mixed with 50 % of the other. In my case, having been pounded with “math facts” from an early age I would have thrived regardless of the ratio, but it’s clear that a progressive leaning combination might have served me better, say a 70 % progressive/30 % traditional ratio. On the other side of the spectrum, if my students are provided with the same 70/30 split then it is unlikely they would ever really catch up and be able to compete with their middle and upper class counterparts. An ideal ratio for my 6^th and 7^th grade 9^th graders would be the inverse, a 70 % traditional/30 % progressive ratio. As I emphasized earlier, not every child needs the same education and to provide them with the same, even at a high quality, would be doing a great disservice.

There is no singular solution to this national debate between Progressive and Traditional math instruction practices. Both have a place in the American classroom. However, both can’t have the same amount of weight in different classrooms serving different students. We must look at who is producing results, for which students and with what practices. The Avon, Connecticut’s and Cherry Creek, Colorado’s of our nation will most likely prosper regardless of curricular and instructional practices decisions. The same can not be said about the Newark, New Jersey’s and Oakland, California’s. Education reform in the world of schools and math must consider the assets and deficiencies of the clients they are serving if they are to be truly effective.

As the “beat the odds” schools in our country are living and dying by the motto “every minute counts” so too must our push for delivering appropriate and necessary math instruction to our under serviced students. It’s not ok to simply engage in mathematical thinking and to share ideas. It’s a great start, but it doesn’t get kids who are four and five grade levels behind to catch up. If our philosophies clash with our realities then we must waive “bye-bye” to philosophy and “hello” to reality. Results are the only thing that matters and instead of thinking like education reformers lets think more like venture capitalist. What’s the bottom line?

Two weeks till break…two years till radical change (12-7-08)

I’m currently reading a book titled “No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning,” and I can’t help but feel that I should be using the title as a guiding motto for the next two years of my life. In this upcoming week I have two important meetings scheduled, one with the Colorado League of Charter Schools and the other with a representative from Get Smart Schools. I’m hopeful that both organizations will play pivotal supporting roles as I look to open an ECE – 8^th grade public charter school housed right in the Manual Facility. The school opening date is fall 2010. From this point until that date I would like to follow the no excuse life model.

There are so many reasons why the school won’t open on its scheduled date. Whether it’s the fact that I have no expertise in early childhood education or that I just had my 27^th birthday two days ago, or that I’ve never done any fundraising in the private sector; it’s easy to see the shortcomings I bring to the table. However, I’m going to acknowledge all the possible deficits that I have, do whatever I can to fix them by either improving myself or recruiting human capital, and move forward. There are “no excuses” for why this school won’t open on time and do exactly what it says it’s going to do. Eliminate the achievement gap and prepare impoverished minority students to compete with their middle and upper class counter parts.

As the text I’m reading states, “indifference to minority children who arrive in kindergarten already behind and continue to flounder is no longer an option for schools.” (Thernstrom 3) It’s no longer an option for our communities and it’s no longer an option for our country. I am frustrated, to put it nicely, with the students who walk into my 9^th grade classroom three and four grade levels behind their peers. I think about my own peer group, law school graduates, commodities and insurance salesmen, bankers, accountants, small business owners, and I can’t help but think about whether my students can compete with them. Do they have the academic, social and cultural capital necessary to thrive in our competitive country? Simply stated…no. That’s not to say they’re not able to develop these assets or that they have less innate ability then my friends did at their age, I simply mean that should the school not ensure the attainment of these assets then the students chances of success in our global economy are dire.

For those wondering how I define success I will put it in non-financial terms and simply define it as the ability to do whatever you want in this world without being held back by your deficits. When I think about the quality of some of my students writing and what a cover letter on a job application would look like I quickly see a deficit that could hold them back from achievement. When I say good morning to a student and put out my hand only to receive a barely audible voice in response with a weak hand shake and no eye contact I once again see a deficit that could stop one of our students from getting what they want in this world.

As the “beat the odds” schools are proving and as all research that I’ve been reading states…we must develop the human capital of our students which includes everything from writing engaging, organized and grammatically correct text to shaking a persons hand, looking them in the eye and confidently saying “good morning.” This is the backbone of inner-city academic institutions that are changing the odds for our most underserved student population and this will be the back bone of Make it Happen Academy, an ECE – 8^th grade charter school that will open in fall of 2010 and will ensure that minority students living in poverty can and will compete with my peer group. There are “no excuses.”

Geoffrey Canada and "Directors of Change" (11-25-08)

I'm almost done reading Paul Tough's whatever it takes and with each page I find myself more and more engaged in the work of Geoffrey Canada. Last night in particular, as I worked through the chapter titled "Conveyor Belt" I was struck by his sediments. The passage that really hit me read as follows.

"Here's the problem with everything that we've been doing in this field," he told me. It was a chilly February morning, and we were sitting at the small round meeting table in his office. "For the last thirty or forty years, all of us have chosen to work in places where kids are behind, with the thought that we would be superheros and we would go in and save these kids." The superhero method was often emotionally rewarding for those who practiced it, Canada said, even if it was also usually personally exhausting. It meant you were engaged in battle in the most hopeless neighborhoods, teaching or mentoring or otherwise rescuing desperate kids whom the system had written off, and if you were good at your job, it meant that you regularly performed miracles.

Canada had felt the sense of triumph that came with those successes. He knew it well, in fact. It could be exhilarating. "But the problem with that approach is you will always have more business than you can handle," Canada said. "You will never solve the problem. You will only save some small number of kids who are on their way to the dark end of things. We've all done it, and we all still do it, and we need to keep doing it. But it is what I've come to think of as the old-fashioned way of working in these communitis."

What the conveyor-belt idea represented to Canada was the hope of a new alternative. "The question is, can you build a system where kids in middle school won't need these kinds of interventions in order to be successful?" he said. "And my bet - I could be wrong, but this is my bet - is if we start with kids very early, and we provide them with the kind of intense and continuous academic rigor and support that they need, then when they get to the middle school and high school level, we're not going to need those superhuman strategies at all."

Whatever it Takes - pg. 196

What Tough pulls out of Canada's philosophy on solving issues of poverty is the exact dilemma that I've been facing since the start of my career and most recently, since helping to re-open Manual High School. How much can we really do when we start with 15 year olds? We know from the studies of economists, sociologist and brain development psychologists that much of our cognitive abilities have already been established by the time we reach the ages of 15 or 16 years old.

The nobel prize winning economist James Heckman does a great job of synthesizing this idea. In essence, intervening with a 16 or 17 year old is too late. "A person's cognitive abilities are fairly stuck in place. But the same level of intervention at an early age can make a very big difference in a child's life." He goes on to illustrate his point. "If you intervene in a child's life early, later intervention wil have more to build upon, which means that they will pay off more as well. But if you don't start early, the reverse happens: each year it gets harder and harder to have an effect on a child's development." (Tough 193)

Where does this leave me?

Simple...Manual High School, regardless of its "Superhuman" efforts, will never save all of its students. We're certainly giving them a way better chance to succeed in life and I'm confident that we will in fact have a lot of successes. However, as Canada stated, we'll only be saving a small number kids. My solution...stop putting so much effort into a solution that doesn't work (or at least doesn't work nearly as effectively as others).

Instead, I propose turning the Manual High School facility into a mini-version of the Harlem Children's Zone. The facility would include everything needed to take a newborn baby from birth through college (the whole notion of Canada's plan in Harlem).

• Baby college
• Intense Toddler Support
• Health Clinic
  
• Early Childhood Education
  
• Elementary, Middle and High School
  
• Alumni Support
• Mentor Programs
  

Canada's entire philosophy is grounded in the fact that if students of color growing up in poverty are given the right, intensive supports through out their life that we can in fact eliminate the achievement gap and in many ways, never see it in the first place. By turning Manual High School into an interwoven community facility, a conveyor belt of programming that works with kids at each stage, our chances of successfully preparing our neighborhood's kids to compete with upper and middle class society will grow exponentially.

To make this vision a reality, one that I believe many would love to see, it will take a few entrepreneurial leaders (amongst millions of dollars and an overly dedicated staff) with time, energy, passion and some serious know how. Human capital is the essential ingredient to any start up company and the same is true for any efforts on the non-profit, educational side of the world; especially one trying to create major social change. What we need to do is find people with specific interests in each of the sections of the conveyor belt. Someone needs to lead the charge on early childhood education. Another individual needs to run our Baby College. Yet another needs to head the health services clinic. The question is, what pieces of the conveyor belt need to be implemented first? It's clear that getting all of these support systems in place at once would be a nearly impossible challenge. Therefor, which ones are top priority for not only future success, but short-term, temporary success as well?

This is the question that I would like to pose to a board of directors that I've fittingly titled the "Directors of Change." Such a group would oversee the effort on all fronts and ensure cohesion between the different sections of the "conveyor belt." The Directors of Change would be the leaders from each intervention effort, i.e. the principal of the Middle School, the Director of the Baby College, etc. as well as CEO's from successful private and non-profit entities in the Denver Metro Area. Beyond answering the question stated above, the board would lay out a mission statement, organizational charts, a detailed plan for staffing, child/family recruitment, and facility usage , and all other necessary endeavors needed to bring the vision to life.

At the end of the day we must stop relying on our "superhuman" efforts to save 15 and 16 year old kids. It's time to stop using what Canada refers to as a "traditional method' of solving our problem and move towards a set of intervention solutions that when tightly woven together actually stand a chance at creating real change. On his march to the White House Obama carried a message entrenched in the notions of hope and change. He wasn't saying that he alone was going to be the change...he was simply planting and motivating seeds so that we could all stand up and act. The timing couldn't be more right for this effort. Let's make it happen!

Input vs. Output (11-16-08)

I used to love editing video in college. Whether a news story for our weekly broadcast or a highlight video for the sports teams to use for recruitment; The editing room is an exciting place where you can combine creativity and hard work to make a product that you can be proud of. The beauty of editing is that when you're done you get a finished product and your input (time, effort, imagination, etc.) has a direct correlation to the output (the quality of the video).

The world of urban education, however, does not follow this simple input/output model. Many educators in schools in Denver and around the country are inputing a great deal of time, effort, innovation, dedication, etc. and are still not seeing a quality finished product (results). What's the problem? The problem, as I see it, is that we're putting way too much time and energy into a system that doesn't work. The teacher in a comprehensive high school of 2,000 kids who's working insane hours to catch kids up that are 3 or 4 grade levels behind is deserving of great accolades and praise, but how much of an impact can that teacher have? What if we gathered handfuls of these overachieving educators and had them put all of their energy into the early ages of child development?

As I discovered in Paul Tough's "Whatever it Takes," kids coming from poverty are already at a tremendous disadvantage by the time they are 3 years old. Children at this age from a professional family have an average IQ of roughly 117 and a vocabulary of approximately 1,100 words. Their impoverished counter parts score an average of 79 on the same IQ tests and their vocabulary is roughly half with an average of 525 words. Talk about an uphill battle. By the time these same kids reach the high school level it's no wonder there is a significant "achievement gap." That is why our efforts need to shift...not in the energy level and dedication we're inputing, but in where we're putting it.

If the same group of highly intelligent and dedicated urban educators shifted their focus to the birth though 5th grade population we could see some significant results. Maybe our input might start matching our output. This isn't to say that we don't need highly qualified and passionate teachers working at the secondary level. We obviously do and those kids deserve our best efforts to turn things around. However, recruiting a new group of educators and taking some of the current work force to focus in on the age levels where we can really make a difference and ensure that a gap never starts seems to me as the only way to make a dent in this giant social dilemma.

As Geoffrey Canada, founder of the Harlem Children's Zone states so clearly, we must "transform every aspect of the environment that poor children are growing up in." This is why they've created an endless chain that takes kids from birth through college. There are no breaks in the chain. My suggestion is to take Mr. Canada's idea and run with it. We must focus far more energy on the formative years of childhood so that the gap between poverty and middle class never starts in the first place. Let's gather our great educators, those passionate for change, and open more ECE - 8th grade programs, more baby colleges, and more of anything that's going to give our kids a chance to compete with their middle and upper class counterparts long after they leave our schools.

My new "Paternalistic" Classroom (11-11-08)

"If you don't want to be successful, go to college and work hard every minute of every day then you don't need to be here. There are no excuses in this classroom. We are all here to work together and support one another in learning. There is nothing else. When you walk in the door it's game on! Every day!" I don't think I've ever been so blunt with my students, but my new vision of how class needs to run is a far cry from my progressive, constructivist roots. After visiting schools across the east coast that are making it happen for impoverished minority students, reading "Sweat the Small Stuff," and currently working on Paul Tough's "Whatever it Takes," I no longer have ignorance as an excuse. I know what needs to get done in the classroom and in our school to ensure that our students can compete with middle class America when they leave. Having said that, the transformation of my practice has been both exhausting and rewarding.

Class itself is now comprised of a series of learning activities none of which last more than 25 minutes. Pacing has gone way up as the intensity level and sense of urgency has increased exponentially (I use a timer on my board as often as humanly possible whether it's for 1 minute or 12) Every piece of work done in class is directly related to the day's learning outcome and even when I think I have a good idea about a side activity that could be engaging or interesting if it doesn't do anything to ensure specific learning of the day's outcome then it gets cut out. Moreover, we now have weekly learning outcome assessments that are very much traditional in their format. If a student fails to demonstrate proficiency on their weekly quiz then they have mandatory overtime the following week on Wednesday to receive additional instructional support for over an hour after school. At that point they may re-take the assessment in an attempt to prove a sufficient level of understanding. If they still don't show enough evidence of the essential learning then more support will be provided in the form of lunch and after school support. The classroom continues to move forward with new content being delivered and weekly mastery being shown.

The affect of such a change in my classroom has been noticeable to date. Students are spending more time on task and a greater number are engaged in learning for a higher percentage of time. This phenomenon is also transferring to my teammate's classroom as Ms. Frazier, our social studies teacher is finding that students are less reluctant to start tasks and are exhibiting more on task behaviors through out class. As far as data is concerned, I am not particularly excited about the results of our first week in this new learning environment. Part of the problem lies in an attendance issue as students who were in class Monday through Thursday were far more likely to succeed on the assessment. In addition, students who missed Friday obviously didn't take the assessment and in turn are currently considered "In Progress." Nonetheless, having the data is certainly beneficial as I now know exactly which students need what support. Moreover, the goal of increasing student accountability of learning has been simultaneously heightened as their grades are tied nearly entirely to their prove of understanding on these formal assessments. It's not that I disagree with the notion of examining a students "body of evidence" to prove essential learning, it's that I'm not sure that it's best for my students. They're coming in 2 to 4 grade levels behind and in their time with us we have to prepare them for not only entering, but finishing a four year college. My progressive vision of assessment and examining the whole child over an extended period of time might just not be enough to get the job done.

Please see the graphs at the top of this post to see our first week's data set of both our mad minute (the number of problems we can complete in a minute on a specific skill, i.e. adding + and - integers) and our learning outcome proficiency levels. Both are discouraging at first look, but knowing that this is a new process/system that I've put in place I am confident of few things.

1.) Students will begin to take class more seriously as the expectation levels around demonstrating mastery on a weekly basis have increased dramatically.
2.) Students who show up everyday and work hard will see results and that momentum will spread through out the classroom.
3.) Students who use the additional support and resources provided to help them reach mastery will find a feeling of success that they may have never experienced before, thus giving them drive to push forward.
4.) There will always be a challenge in taking students who are well below grade level and demanding that they show mastery of at grade level skills and knowledge. However, such a demand must be placed on students if they are to get caught up and truly compete with their middle class counterparts.

We have no choice, but to move in a direction that places more urgency on both teachers and students alike. There is no doubt that the effort needed on my end has increased alongside of my students, but what choice do we have if we are to really "beat the odds?"

Williamsburg Collegiate – Balancing rigor and joy (10-30-08)

“We’ve just wasted 65 seconds,” announced Ms. Ely. “I don’t feel like we’re ready for math class today…let’s start again.” As the students read out the number of problems they got right on the day’s mad minute for the second time it was hard to not notice the highly valued commodities of efficiency and urgency. (For those who don’t know, “mad minute” is a timed computation test in which students complete as many arithmetic problems as possible in a minute. The goal of the process is simply to increase automaticity and fluency) In fact, the entire time I observed the class in action I didn’t notice a single dip in learning engagement. Even when students were in transition between activities, a time when side talk is common, the students were instructed to “write their 8’s” and then their “7’s.” (8, 16, 24, …), which they quickly obliged. The agenda on the board read like a presidential to do list, filled with 9 items all set to a time limit of no more than 20 minutes. The high stakes, “we’ve got things to get done and we’re going to get them done now,” environment was palpable with Ms. Ely leading the charge. You could think of the urgency as Peyton Manning pushing his team down the field with time expiring needing one last touchdown to clinch victory. This class was all business!

Simultaneous to the intense, highly structured environment was a room of 5^th graders who wanted to be there. Constantly raising their hands (it wasn’t uncommon for all 25 kids in the class to shoot their hands to the sky upon being asked a question) and going along with whatever was being asked, the students almost looked like they were part of a gang.

That’s how the school gets it done. A 5^th – 8^th grade middle school with 250 students, Williamsburg Collegiate is an amazing blend of structure, discipline, urgency and fun. Their Special Education expert refers to this mixture as a balance between “joy and rigor.” The school is comprised of 60 % Hispanic students and 40 % African American. 85 % of the student body is on the free and reduced lunch program and 14 – 15 % of the students are supported through special education. The school is part of the Uncommon Schools network, a CMO that acts as the umbrella to other schools including North Star Academy in Newark and Leadership Prep in New York.

What do they do to ensure success?

First off, students arrive between 7:15 and 7:45 daily and don’t leave until 5:30 at night. The staff, an intensely dedicated group, has the same contractual day as the students, with every teach participating in additional student support through the extended day. In addition to the extended day, incoming 5^th graders attend a 3 week orientation sessions.

Beyond the use of time, every individual in the building teaches at least one class, principals included. Thackston, the Director of Operations teaches a math class, while the school’s principal, Julie teaches a science class. Beyond teaching, members of the administrative team meet with every teacher for at least one hour per week. These meetings focus on reviewing lessons, student performance, and classroom observation. The sense of urgency felt in the classroom permeates at all levels of the school.

Interim Assessments – Finding out where students are and doing something about it

Each 6 weeks every student in the school takes an interim assessment to see if they’ve mastered the content from their core classes. The tests are a combination of open-ended, constructed response questions and multiple choice problems. On Monday and Tuesday the tests are administered and on Wednesday the whole faculty assembles to assess the open ended, constructed response problems from the tests. Upon gathering the data from the constructed response problems the remainder of the tests are scanned using a scan-tron and the data is then transferred to a spreadsheet that breaks down each individual student with their level of understanding on each learning objective. This massive, data based document is than given back to the teachers by Friday morning so they may spend the day analyzing it and planning next steps. Many schools are similar to Williamsburg Collegiate in their ability to collect data on student learning, however, this particular 5^th – 8^th grade “no-excuse” middle school does some amazing work after they’ve broken the data down.

There are three major streams of effort that teachers use once they’ve analyzed their data.

1.) Re-teaching the class – If 80 % of students in a particular class fail to show mastery of a specific learning objective then that teacher will make plans to provide a lesson or lessons focused on the weakness of the students. In addition, if a smaller percentage of students are struggling with a particular learning objective then the teacher might include problems that address the student weakness in their “Do Nows” for a series of weeks. (Do Nows are the “warm up” problems that start each class).

2.) Small Group/Individual Tutoring – Since school goes to 5:30 on a regular basis there is already built in time for additional instruction and support. If 20 % of students in a particular class are struggling with the same learning objectives based on their interim assessment then the teacher may have all 20 % work with him or her in a series of after school tutoring groups. By doing so, the class remains on track with its content while students who need it receive additional support to fill in missing chunks of learning.

3.) Pull out interventions – If certain students are really failing to thrive in the classroom environment and are demonstrating little to no understanding on the interim assessment then the school may use pull-out, one on one, or small group time during the school day to provide more intensive instruction.

Regardless of which stream of effort is used, it is clear that an approach in which no child is overlooked and explicit next steps are taken is a model for all of us to follow. In this school it is not ok to not master essential content. Instead, if you show that you are not proficient in essential areas the school does everything it can to get you back on track and ready for your future education, most notably, college.

The College Dream

At Williamsburg Collegiate each student is assigned to an advisory in 5^th grade when they enter. Their advisories are named after college alma maters and their graduation year is based on the year that they should receive their undergraduate degree. In 8^th grade there is a huge emphasis on the college-bound track. Students learn how to calculate their GPAs, take trips to college campuses, and start to examine what a good college application looks like.

On Fridays of each week the whole school gets together for what’s called “base camp.” During base camp students participate in a variety of activities, but everything is framed around “the mountain climb to college.” The school’s transparency about students attending college certainly doesn’t guarantee that every 8^th grader will get there and stay there, but it definitely sends a clear message that such high expectations are common place and simply the way we do business.

What can we learn from Williamsburg?

If you want to see a class where every minute counts then I highly encourage you to visit this “uncommon school.” Their teachers demand the highest productivity rare that I’ve ever witnessed in a classroom. In the past I’ve always taught my students about productivity gaps, the difference between what you could accomplish and what you actually accomplish. The productivity gap for the majority of students in my classrooms has fluctuated from high to low depending on the day, my planning and student attitudes. At Williamsburg Collegiate it seems like the productivity gap says at consistent 0. There is no gap between what could get done and what does get done.

The sense of urgency developed in the classrooms mixed with the teacher’s use of interim assessments to drive instruction is a valuable combination. When you add on the non-stop push to get students ready for college you have a school where everyone has a common purpose and the community is stronger. “Team before individual” is certainly an underlying motto permeating the halls and classrooms of the building. Everyone is doing their part and as a result the school is a highly functioning learning environment with a mix of structure, discipline and achievement.

The do whatever it takes attitude of the school is everywhere you look and their director of operations is no exception. As he says, “you get in the building and we’ll do everything possible to keep you here and convince you that this is where you need to be.”